But no Jane.
Even stranger: no Ethan. He isn’t on Facebook—or Foursquare, or anywhere—and Google yields nothing beyond assorted links to a photographer by the same name.
“Aren’t most kids on Facebook?” Bina asks.
“His dad won’t let him. He doesn’t even have a cell phone.” I roll one sagging sleeve up my arm. “And he’s homeschooled. He probably doesn’t know many people here. Probably doesn’t know anyone.”
“Someone must know his mother, though,” she says. “Someone in Boston, or . . . just someone.” She walks to the window. “Wouldn’t there be photographs? Weren’t the police at their house today?”
I consider this. “For all we know, they could have photographs of this other woman. Alistair could’ve just shown them anything, told them anything. They’re not going to search their house. They made that very clear.”
She nods, turns, looks at the Russell house. “The blinds are down,” she says.
“What?” I join her at the window and see it for myself: the kitchen, the parlor, Ethan’s bedroom—each one shuttered.
The house has closed its eyes. Screwed them shut.
“See?” I tell her. “They don’t want me looking in anymore.”
“I don’t blame them.”
“They’re being careful. Doesn’t that prove it?”
“It’s suspicious, yes.” She tilts her head. “Do they close the blinds often?”
“Never. Never. It’s been like a goldfish bowl.”
She hesitates. “Do you think . . . do you think you might be, you know—in danger?”
This hadn’t occurred me. “Why?” I ask slowly.
“Because if what you saw really happened—”
I flinch. “It did.”
“—then you’re, you know, a witness.”
I draw a breath, then another.
“Will you please stay the night?”
Her brows lift. “This is a come-on.”
“I’ll pay you.”
She looks at me half-lidded. “It’s not that. I’ve got an early day tomorrow, and all my things are back—”
“Please.” I gaze deep into her eyes. “Please.”
She sighs.
45
Darkness—dense, thick. Bomb-shelter dark. Deep-space dark.
Then, far away, a remote star, a prick of light.
Move closer.
The light trembles, bulges, pulses.
A heart. A tiny heart. Beating. Beaming.
Flushing the dark around it, dawning on a silk-fine loop of chain. A blouse, white as a ghost. A pair of shoulders, gilt with light. A line of neck. A hand, the fingers playing at the throbbing little heart.
And above it, a face: Jane. The real Jane, radiant. Watching me. Smiling.
I smile back.
And now a pane of glass slides in front of her. She presses a hand to it, prints it with tiny maps of her fingertips.
And behind her, suddenly, the darkness lifts on a scene: the love seat, raked with white and red lines; twin lamps, now bursting into light; the carpet, a garden in bloom.
Jane looks down at the locket, fingers it tenderly. At her luminous shirt. At the inkblot of blood spreading, swelling, lapping at her collar, flaming against her skin.
And when she looks up again, looks at me, it’s the other woman.
Saturday, November 6
46
Bina leaves a little past seven, just as light is wrapping its fingers around the curtains. She snores, I’ve learned, light little snuffles, like distant waves. Unexpected.
I thank her, sink my head into the pillow, drop back into sleep. When I wake, I check my phone. Almost eleven o’clock.
I stare at the screen for a moment. A minute later I’m talking to Ed. No “guess who” this time.
“That’s unbelievable,” he says after a pause.
“Yet it happened.”
He pauses again. “I’m not saying it didn’t. But”—I brace myself—“you’ve been really heavily medicated lately. So—”
“So you don’t believe me, either.”
A sigh. “No, it’s not that I don’t believe you. Only—”
“Do you know how frustrating this is?” I shout.
He goes quiet. I continue.
“I saw it happen. Yes, I was medicated, and I—yes. But I didn’t imagine it. You don’t take a bunch of pills and imagine something like that.” I suck in a breath. “I’m not some high schooler who plays violent video games and shoots up his school. I know what I saw.”
Ed’s still quiet.
Then:
“Well, for one thing, just to be academic, are you sure it was him?”
“Him who?”
“The husband. Who . . . did it.”
“Bina said the same thing. Of course I’m sure.”
“Couldn’t have been this other woman?”
I go still.
Ed’s voice perks, the way it does when he’s thinking out loud. “Say she’s the mistress, as you say. Down from Boston or wherever. They fight. Out comes the knife. Or whatever. In goes the knife. No husband involved.”
I think. I resist it, but—maybe. Except: “Who did it is beside the point,” I insist. “For now. The fact is, it was done, and the problem is that no one believes me. I don’t even think Bina believes me. I don’t think you believe me.”
Silence. I find I’ve drifted up the stairs, entered Olivia’s bedroom.
“Don’t tell Livvy about this,” I add.
Ed laughs, an actual Ha!, bright as tin. “I’m not going to.” He coughs. “What does Dr. Fielding say?”
“I haven’t talked to him.” I should.
“You should.”
“I will.”
A pause.
“And what’s going on with the rest of the block?”
I realize I have no idea. The Takedas, the Millers, even the Wassermen—they haven’t so much as pinged my radar this last week. A curtain has fallen on the street; the homes across the road are veiled, vanished; all that exists are my house and the Russells’ house and the park between us. I wonder what’s become of Rita’s contractor. I wonder which book Mrs. Gray has selected for her reading group. I used to log their every activity, my neighbors, used to chronicle each entrance and exit. I’ve got whole chapters of their lives stored on my memory card. But now . . .
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“Well,” he says, “maybe that’s for the best.”
After we’ve spoken, I check the phone clock again. Eleven eleven. My birthday. Jane’s, too.
47
I’ve avoided the kitchen since yesterday, avoided the first floor altogether. Now, though, I’m once more at the window, staring down the house across the park. I pour a ribbon of wine into a glass.
I know what I saw. Bleeding. Pleading.
This isn’t nearly over.
I drink.
48
The blinds, I see, are up.
The house gawks at me, wide-eyed, as though surprised to find me looking back. I zoom in, pan the windows with my gaze, focus on the parlor.
Spotless. Nothing. The love seat. The lamps like guardsmen.
Shifting in the window seat, I swerve the lens up toward Ethan’s room. He’s gargoyle-perched at his desk, in front of his computer.
I zoom further. I can practically make out the text on the screen.
Movement on the street. A car, glossy as a shark, cruises into a spot in front of the Russells’ walk, parks. The driver’s door fans out like a fin, and Alistair emerges in a winter coat.
He strides toward the house.
I snap a photo.
When he reaches the door, I snap another.
I don’t have a plan. (Do I ever have a plan anymore, I wonder?) It’s not as though I’ll see his hands rinsed in blood. He won’t knock on my door and confess.
But I can watch.
He enters the house. My lens jumps to the kitchen, and sure enough, he appears there a moment later. Slaps the keys on the counter, shrugs off his coat. Leaves the room.
Doesn’t return.
I move the camera one floor up, to the parlor.
And as I do, she appears, light and bright in a spring-green pullover: “Jane.”
I adjust the lens. She goes crisp, sharp, as she moves first to one lamp, then the other, switching them on. I watch her fine hands, her long neck, the sweep of her hair against her cheek.
The liar.
Then she leaves, slim hips shifting as she walks out the door.
Nothing. The parlor is empty. The kitchen is empty. Upstairs, Ethan’s chair sits vacant, the computer screen a black box.
The phone rings.
My head swivels, almost back to front, like an owl, and the camera drops to my lap.
The sound is behind me, but my phone is by my hand.